


art of almost

by explodinganyway



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodinganyway/pseuds/explodinganyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie doesn’t exactly know what differs between one moment and the next except that looking at Britta suddenly makes her want to smile, makes her want to carefully brush back those curls, drop a kiss to her nose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	art of almost

**Author's Note:**

> Worked on this for a while but I really wanted to just get it done and posted so yeah.

It happens one day in autumn, or maybe it’s winter; Annie never could remember. It happens when, two thirds of the way through a movie, Britta falls asleep on the couch. All in all it’s rather anticlimactic; one minute she’s absorbed in some movie with Reese Witherspoon (the name of it alludes her to this day), and the next she’s lost where her breath is supposed to go after ‘in’. For most people, she thinks (she fantasises) that they fall in love at more crucial times: when first laying eyes on each other (Troy), at their first kiss (Jeff), at a beautiful picnic under the stars made just for her (Vaughn). But no, Annie falls in love with Britta Perry when a slight shuffle makes her eyes move from the screen to where she’s curled up in a tiny ball, her grown out hair lying in haphazard curls all over her face and her tiny upturned nose pushed close into a pillow. Annie doesn’t exactly know what differs between one moment and the next except that looking at Britta suddenly makes her want to smile, makes her want to carefully brush back those curls, drop a kiss to her nose. Annie gets these thoughts a lot, although usually about Jeff or Zac Efron and so she does what she does in those situations and sits on her hands so she doesn’t accidentally reach out just to feel the indent as her finger runs down Britta’s cheek (which she notices is flushed in the light of the TV, a beautiful stain of red along her sharp cheek bones).

Britta doesn’t realise until some time in spring, so Annie spends a lot of time sitting on her hands or tapping a purple pen and remembering how casually Britta had stripped that day, black underwear and long, pale limbs and Annie wonders why she couldn’t have fallen in love with her then, couldn’t have remembered exactly how she had looked with her chin propped up on their half of the study table. She’s never believed in fate but she does believe in timing, the correct timing to be precise and so resigns herself to the fact that it wouldn’t have worked back then. (It would have, but neither realise this).

Annie happens upon Britta one day in winter, walking slowly and wobbly and thinks that maybe, despite it being nine am, Britta is drunk or stoned or a combination of the two, right up until Britta looks up from her feet and (with an expression of utter despair) tells Annie that she’s killed too many ants in her lifetime and won’t let herself kill more. Annie thinks she’s joking until they are an hour late for class and wonders a) how they passed the time so easily and b) why she never considered just walking away. (Later, in the middle of an argument, she will make Britta recall this memory and end her point with a resounding ‘duh-doy’ and Britta will equal parts push and pull, saying that Annie is spending far too much time with her and then pulling her in for a heart-stopping, toe-curling, movie-climax kiss).

Annie had always counted things; letters in words, signs on buses, number of A’s on her report card, number of pills resting in her palm. She now does it on automatic pilot, her brain squirrelling away data that, come night time, she will hardly remember. She still does it though; counts how many time Britta smiles at her, that full open smile that makes butterflies or something much heavier and wilder appear in Annie’s stomach, counts things that Britta gets her to do without even trying, counts how many pens she lends to Britta (fourteen) and how many she gets back (none) (she can’t find it in herself to care and can’t find it in herself to say no when, blue eyes wide and pouting lips, Britta asks to borrow one yet again. She’s going broke from buying stationary).

It’s Troy who approaches her first and despite whatever he and Britta had been being well and truly over, she feels guilty, her eyes shifting so she doesn’t meet his questions. (If she looked she would have seen him smile and his eyes say ‘it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s really fine’). Troy tells Abed about Annie’s response and he writes it down in careful script in the book where he makes sense of people (or at least where he tries to. Turns out people never make much sense at all).  
Jeff realises next because Annie has never been one for subtlety and he no longer feels the burn of her looks as they linger on him through their study lessons. He doesn’t want to admit that he misses that feeling as much as he does (that there’s an ache in his chest that springs when he reaches out to pat her head and she’s not there). But Jeff Winger has never been one to admit to pain and so instead shows up to Britta’s apartment with a six pack and an unopened bottle of vodka and, just when he gets her drunk enough that she’s looking at his lips like a prayer, tells her that Annie is in love with her. (It’s mean but Jeff Winger is mean but also nice and he can’t stand Annie having to hurt longer than she has already). The next morning Britta wakes with a terrible hangover but it’s not the heaviest thing pressing on her mind. She doesn’t want to talk about it with Jeff and so steels herself every morning for a week, vowing to tell Annie this, this day, she promises this day.

This day turns into a week, two weeks, until they’re going out to a bar (The Red Door, not L Street) and the vodka she’s drinking is blurring the reasons she hasn’t spoken to Annie, (pretty, delicate, deliciously dirty Annie). She walks up to talk to her, finally ready (or close enough) to get this all out in the open, but ends up tripping over a chair leg, running into Jeff and scowling as Troy and Abed laugh at her (well Troy laughs at her, and Abed looks stoic). This keeps happening, this almost. Jeff sidling up to her when her hand is inches away from brushing Annie’s arm, Shirley loud and right beside them as she buys Annie a drink. It’s annoying and almost choreographed and it isn’t until they’re all piled in Shirley’s van that she’s pressed close to her, and not until they’re at their apartment, in Annie’s room and accepting a t-shirt as pyjamas that they’re alone (Abed and Troy are brushing their teeth and forgetting that they don’t share the bunk beds anymore).

It happens like this; Britta slips in beside Annie, feels the warmth still held in the flannelette sheets, feels the heaviness of the blanket over her, feels Annie’s breath on the back of her neck. It happens when she rolls over slowly to see deep blue eyes wide in the half light. Annie’s pupils are blown wide by the dark of the room and she feels her breath catch, feels her hands grip the sheets uncertainly because she is not Jeff and doesn’t know what to do when a twenty year old (even though she’s now twenty-one) wants to kiss her. It happens like this, Annie’s hand, cool from outside, reaches up to run down her cheek and she can’t stop the breath she puffs into the touch, too heavy to be a sigh but too quiet to be anything else. When their lips touch it’s a thousand love songs playing in her head and none at all and her lips feel new, raw and open for the first time. It happens like this; a shuffle closer and bold hands and Annie-and-Britta being known together. It’s fingers that lock together perfectly and an almost acceptance from the group, Pierce’s jokes aside.

(It happens like this but it also doesn’t. It happens like this only once, one timeline where they get together in this night. It happens like this and continues on it’s own tangent, living and breathing and togetherness. It doesn’t happen always though because Annie falls asleep by the time Britta comes back into the room. It doesn’t happen because Britta, with a sobriety she doesn’t possess, slips into bed silently. She holds still and tense and when she wakes up the next morning she hasn’t moved.) This Annie and Britta will not have an easily resolved story and by the time Annie wakes up the next morning, (bleary, and her first time experiencing a hangover) Britta is gone.  
(She does a good job of acting like it doesn’t break her into pieces.)

All the other timelines of themselves start living happily ever after, start fighting, start loving, start moving apart and together and all the while they act awkwardly; pretending that neither one wants to kiss the other. It works for a while (or Annie seems to think so) but then she gets cornered by her roommates one night with a badly made 'Intervention' sign, (a must-have trope for anytime someone is acting completely oblivious, Abed explains to her). Troy holds her hands and only cries through the monologue Abed has been practising once and all in all Annie is mortified (Abed making any reference to lesbian sex is something she never quite expected to hear) but a little bit thankful because somehow, in between her finding out about a Spanish study group by accident and this moment, she has learnt that these two /care/ for her. She hugs them both, Abed's hand only just ghosting her shoulder blade before squaring her shoulders and heading down to her car. It's not that she suddenly has the nerve to d something about this (the Britta of it all, the long looks and odd brushes of fingertips and the way she's noticed Britta staring at her lips more and more) it's just having a discussion about your very limited love-live (or maybe less than that; is I-have-a-weird-serious-crush-on-my-best-friend life) makes her ready to face whatever consequences whatever actions she can find the courage to do.

In the end, it's not very dramatic. Britta answers the door in a shirt and sleep shorts and Annie blushes and tries to get out the words for 'I like you, please kiss me' but can't quite so when Britta moves to let her in, she moves forward (lips first) and they happen to land somewhat close to Britta's mouth and if Annie isn't very confident or you know...accurate, then Britta makes up for it with her shocked blue eyes, slowly softening smile and hands that reach for Annie who, in the few seconds of silence has turned bright red (a beautiful stain of red coming down from her cheek bones). When Britta kisses her properly, two mouths and eyelashes brushing against cheeks and hands nervous and fluttering, Annie feels like maybe all of her time waiting (sitting on her hands, watching Britta as she smiled) was worth it. She feels light and warm and full and feels everything at once and somehow it doesn't matter that she was nervous before or that she is really not sure if Britta is wanting this in the same way she is, or that they are going to have to tell the group somehow and Shirley and, oh gosh, Pierce. What matters is Britta pulling her into her apartment before they can draw attention to themselves and her lips pressing over and over again against hers and the way Britta's hair smells like springtime; like new things blossoming and people coming together. 

(Britta texts Jeff 'thanks' when Annie is in the bathroom later that evening and she doesn't get a text back but on Monday no one looks twice at their hands clasped together and Pierce only makes one lesbian joke.) She meets Annie's (beautiful beautiful) eyes across the study table and it's enough. (It's perfect.)


End file.
